Art – Literature – Music – Movies
Weren’t you astonished by the caution of human gestures on Attic gravestones? Wasn’t love and departure placed so gently on shoulders that it seemed to be made of a different substance than in our world? Remember the hands, how weightlessly they rest, though there is power in the torsos. These self-mastered figures know: “We can […]
our own heart always exceeds us … Read More »
It is truly strange to no longer inhabit the earth, to no longer practice customs barely acquired, not to give a meaning of human futurity to roses, and other expressly promising things: no longer to be what one was in endlessly anxious hands, and to set aside even one’s own proper name like a broken
Death – there’s no denying it – lies at the very heart of life. The only thing that enables our consciousness to grasp this and, having endured the realization, to be liberated from it is love. Each in his own way, Chopin and Rachmaninov have meditated upon this unfathomable mystery and transfigured it with music.
death … liberated by love … Read More »
“The quality of mercy is not strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. ‘T is mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
the quality of mercy … Read More »
“Not every patient can be saved, but his illness may be eased by the way the doctor responds to him – and in responding to him, the doctor may save himself. But first he must become a student again; he has to dissect the cadaver of his professional persona; he must see that his silence
how ‘the doctor may save himself’ … Read More »
Dou, in his painting, seems to perceive that this was the beginning of a new path that would lead medicine to modernity, a path along which medical practice would be increasingly exerted on the patient, rather than with the patient. The painting is composed as a theatrical scene, and the tapestry acts as a drop-curtain.
the patient … alone … Read More »
… Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Red Beard’ is the story of a recent medical graduate assigned to a rural clinic for his post-graduate training. In his arrogance, he is livid that he should have to train in a poor clinic – aspiring instead to ascend the ranks of caring for the rich and powerful Shoguns. Through a
The Word climbs up slowly out of the silence in the child, and the words of old men and women are slow, too, as they•return to the silence that is the end of life. Like a burden that has grown too heavy the word falls out of the mouth of the old, more down into
the silence of death … Read More »
The artist as a young woman turns her face toward the viewer and surprises us with her lively eyes, which make her appear to be responding to a call. Her right eye, different in color and without a pupil, suggests the words of M0digliani: “Because with one eye you see the world outside, and with
a reality of profound tension … Read More »
by Jane Kenyon In the Nursing Home She is like a horse grazing a hill pasture that someone makes smaller by coming every night to pull the fences in and in. She has stopped running wide loops, stopped even the tight circles. She drops her head to feed; grass is dust, and the creekbed’s dry.
in the nursing home … Read More »
